


Borderland

by em_gnat



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, nope! strictly platonic!, strictly platonic bonding.....unless?? ;), team building through murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:34:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22239496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em_gnat/pseuds/em_gnat
Summary: When a young nightsister takes up a guard post on the border between woman's land and man's land, she meets her true enemy face-to-face.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. The Sweet Hello

The swamp hums in the morning. It’s a land striped with shafts of pink morning light, beams slicing between the dense thorny branches overhead. A lone nightsister cuts calmly through the reeds, moving with purpose, and reaches out her crimson-gloved hands to brush the spinney crowns of the water reeds. The morning itself breathes, and she breathes with it, lungs full, heart full, the silence filled with sound: the sussurus of a water reptile slipping into the mire, the insects glowing in little clusters outside the light. 

She finds the wooden slats that lead up the sheer rock face to the watchtower. Blinking upward, she frowns, adjusts the energy-bow and pack on her back, and begins the climb. It takes only a step before she finds the first rotted slat, cracked in half and mildewed: deplorably out of repair. She frowns, huffs in indignation, and continues her climb, pointedly pulling herself over the broken foothold.

The darkness gives way to light. A sheet of sunlight cuts across the top of the cliff face. She clamors out of the shadow of the swampland and up onto rock wall, turning about, wind whipping her pale blue hair back from her face. She gazes out over the tangle of humming darkness, hears the low call of what can only be a rancor, and closes her eyes, breathing the air and the wind. 

Turning at last, her sandaled feet whisper across the threshold the the little guard house. It’s narrow and tall enough for her to stand in, more like a water closet than a watch tower, but there is an altar within--that’s the important part. There stand the figures of the Fanged God and Winded Goddess, nested amid old leaves and dried lichen. She drops her pack, props her energy bow against the inside of the door frame, and sets to work, scooping the debris out of nooks and crannies with both hands. The wind takes the dried leaves and scatters them across the sky. She dusts the statues of the god and the goddess off lovingly, a small smile curving her pale lips as she conjures the green fire within the bowl that sits between them. 

Coaxing with her fingertips, she pulls a little emerald will-o-the-wisp from the flame. It bobs around her head, circling like a satellite. Outside the watch-house, she kneels and sings a full-throated salutation, her voice echoing out over the swampland declaring her presence. Her name is Slania and she has left her coven behind. Her name is Slania, and she is a sister of the night, a daughter of the Winged Goddess and the Fanged god. Her name is Slania, beloved of spirits, heir to their power, and this is her place, the one place where she belongs. This guardpost is spoken for. After years of being empty, she has come to claim it. Her song consecrates its purpose.

The guard-house glows from within, lit with that electric green light. 

  
  


* * *

Slania sits cross legged on the stone, her bow and sword neatly laid out before her, and surveys her domain. It’s brighter here than she is used to and the sky is a vivid pink. Behind her lies the swamp and beyond that, the forests of the Nightsister clan and the cool crystal caverns the nightsisters call home. _Her village._ In front of her, the craggy boulders go on and on until they build up into distant, snow-capped mountains. But from where she now sits, on the stark, rough stone wall that separates one region from the other, she can see a flicker of reflected light gleaming off something across from her.

Yards and Yards away. _On the Men’s side of the border._

Another guard-house.

“Oh _look_ ,” she says with a smirk. “We have a neighbor.”

The distant figure of Nightbrother stalks across the boulders, holding a long lance in his hands. The tip gleams--that’s what catches her attention--and as Slania watches, the brother begins to run through drills, twirling the lance over his horned head and stabbing at an imaginary foes. Even though he is graceful and precise in his movements, Slania gives an unimpressed snort. Pushing herself to her feet, she walks toward the ladder that will take her down into the swamp, the little wisp following close behind her.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Below in the forest, she gathers pieces of driftwood to feed her supper fire. The little wisp helps her search for the best pieces, zipping down and circling a branch until she picks it up, before moving on to find another. The soft hum of the sun-warmed ungrowth is abruptly stilled by a great **SNAP CRASH--** a massive _something_ plowing its way through the swamp. The world at once goes silent, every insect and creature stilled. Slania freezes, glancing up just in time to see the great shape of a rancor move through the glen. Transfixed with awe, she slowly sinks to her knees, lowering the bundle to the soil. Then, closing her eyes, she extends a hand outward, and silently calls out to the creature with her mind:

_Come to me._

She opens her eyes to find she is alone in the clearing. The rancors have gone, without heeding her call in the slightest. Something about the moment had made her think the rancors would respond to her. It was a foolish, vain thought--a child’s thought--and she was no longer a child. Still, she wanted more than anything for the noble monsters of the swampland to favor her. Wasn’t that why she was here, after all?

The disappointment makes a knot in her throat. She swallows it reflexively, but it’s like drinking thorns. Even as she continues her daily tasks, it still aches.

Later, the shifting light of afternoon finds her scowling in determination as she hammers a new step into the cliffside ladder. Wearing a grimace fierce enough to flay a mudfish, she reaches up for the next rotted board and tears it down, tossing it back over her shoulder in disgust.

Then a branch as big as she is spins toward her and strikes the stone cliff-face only an arm’s-span away. 

Moving only her eyes, Slania glances back over her shoulder, half indignant yet not daring to register her surprise.

Yet all she hears is the low burbling of a rancor, prowling somewhere nearby but unseen. The noise seems suspiciously akin to a laugh.

Eventually the sound fades, and Slania feels at ease enough to climb back up the newly repaired ladder.

She arrives at the top of the cliff just in time to see the nightbrother across the ravine march out of his post and begin drilling through his lance forms once more.

“A _ugfh._ He’s out there _again_?” Slania Groans, sinking down onto her mat.

But then, an idea occurs to her.

She stands, feet planted, her blade at her hip and her energy-bow on her back, chin lifted haughtily. She calls upon the spirits of the air to hear her, and with clawed hands she raises stones with the power of her mind, lifting five rocks of varying sizes--from the size of her head to the size of her torso. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the distant figure of the nightbrother stop at his exercises to watch her.

Slania smirks and leaps into action. Lunging forward, she draws her sword from her hip and swings it in an arc, slicing a boulder clean in half. She vaults up onto the cracked boulder as it falls to the ground, using it to step up into the air and slice a second and third boulder in half. Then, vaulting backward, she lands in a crouch, drawing her bow just as she lands. A bolt of electric pink shoots through the air, she stands, quickly drawing back so that bolt after bolt of energy sears the air. The boulders all drop to the ground, sizzling with smoke from bolt-scoured surfaces.

She smirks, darting a glance over at the nightbrother. 

“That ought to show him,” She says to the little will-o-the-wisp, pivoting on her heel and marching back toward the guardhouse. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The sun sets, the sun rises.

Slania wakes, walks out into the soft pink light of morning, stretching her spine like a thistle-stalker. The wisp bobbles after her, zipping past as she stops short in shock. An expression of utter confusion twists her features, but then the bafflement becomes outrage.

“What is he _doing_?” 

Across from her, where the nightbrother typically runs through his lance exercises, a series of wooden poles have been set up in a line. As she watches, he swings himself around the first wooden pole easily, then leaps up and onto the tops of the poles, balancing on the balls of his feet. 

He cartwheels from the top of one pole to another, all the while as sure and agile as if this entire display is a game. Then, suddenly, he freezing in a hand-stand, balancing upside down by one hand alone. The brother stays frozen like that for a long moment-- _too long_ , she thinks, he’ll fall over soon-- before swinging down and around one of the poles. Then again he pauses, holding himself perfectly parallel to the ground, his entire body straight as a board but held up entirely by the strength of his upper arms. Slowly, he lowers his feet until they touch stone, then he bounces up onto a pole, somersaults backward, grabs his lance, and slices the tops off the poles in a perfect sweep, leaving a line of timber that sweeps from shortest to tallest in perfect order.

The nightsister has not moved for some time, so captivated an audience is she. But slumped over a boulder, her fingers drumming irritably on the stone, she glares at the perfect display and mutters, _“I think hate him.”_

Glancing up at the little wisp above her head, a malicious thought occurs to her...and she grins.

_“I’ll show him_...” she whispers

  
  


* * *

  
  


Night has fallen, the velvety dark red of the sky dusted with bright stars. She raises her hands, an invocation seeping from her lips as she closes her eyes and the power builds in her, lifting her sandaled feet up off the ground. She floats silently, her garments and pale hair billowing as if she is submerged in water. Without a sound, she skips down the rocks, down from her guardpost and out into the no-woman’s land between the two of them. Her feet barely touch the stones. She hops over one and the other, leaping impossibly far, her magick picking her up and carrying her, until she lands silently on the nightbrother’s doorstep.

A wind-chime hangs from the corner of the guard house. A woven mat lies across the threshold. There is no door but a blanket and it’s pulled back so that she can see the nightbrother asleep on the floor of the little shed. 

She has never seen a night brother this close before and she studies the orange-ochre color of his skin, streaked with the thorny black tattoos she expected to find. Sharp little horns ring his bald pate, save for three longer points at his temples and center of his brow that stand up like the prongs on a tine. There is a piercing between his nose and his top lip, echoed by another on his chin, and they’re both decorated with studs of a coppery mirror-shine metal. Impossible to tell his age, for she has no knowledge of how age might be worn by a nightbrother, but he seems lean and strong and has muscles as hard as her own. She could continue to study him--to better know her enemy, as it were--but she reminds herself that she has a _task_ to accomplish.

Slowly, an electric green glow fills the little room, pouring over the sleeping nightbrother and everything around him. He blinks blearily, opening his eyes to see a ghastly, glowing apparition floating in his doorway: a desiccated wraith, skull-faced, and decayed.

Slania opens her mouth and screams, and is surprised and impressed by the sound that tears out of her, as if the spirits themselves are screaming through her mouth. It’s a dozen voices at once, and none of them are hers.

The nightbrother screams too, in wide eyed horror, flattening himself back against the wall behind him.

She launches herself backward into the sky, cackling victoriously as she shoots off into the dark, glowing like a green meteorite. She bounds back down the rocks, laughing as she goes. She really got him! The look on his face--! 

_That_ will teach him to beware a nightsister!

  
  


* * *

  
  


The next day, she starts to work early. As she glances across at her neighbor’s guardpost, she notes that he is nowhere to be seen and _harrumphs_ in satisfaction. Her prank last night seems to have sober him a bit. 

Well, that’s as it should be!

Filled with satisfaction, she goes down into the swamp. She walks lightly, weaving between the plants and reeds, calm and confident in her steps. She has walked this way before on the hunt, on a thin animal track where the soil is packed down and easy to walk on. She takes a step--and is suddenly snapped upside down by the ankle, her left foot caught in a snare. 

She swings wildly back and forth, startled and blinking and indignation. Then she hears the snort of laughter. Even as she swings back and forth, the nightbrother appears in her vision, smirking victoriously up at her from the ground.

“You dare-!” 

She lets out a furious screech, and drawing her sword, whips upward and slices the cord. She hits the ground with an _oof!_ the sword jarred from her hand, and scrambles onto her feet. The nightbrother is running away from her, dashing between the trees and leaping easily over a bush, light and shadow dappling his bare tattooed back and shoulders. Fury in her eyes, she pulls her energy-bow forward and draws it back, aiming at the center of his spine. She has him perfectly lined up in her sights. She could just let the bolt loose...strike him right between the shoulder blades…

_No._ She exhales a shuddering breath, and the fury rushes out of her, softening her gaze. Her bow arm relaxes, and she lowers the bow until it points at the ground. 

Something massive bursts from the trees to her right, shaking the ground as it slams massive fists into the swampy soil. The rancor bellows and ear-shattering cry right at the nightbrother, as he narrowly avoids being crushed by one massive swinging fist. He flips ungracefully backward, and comes to a stop crouched in knee deep in water, his pale green eyes wide as he gazes up and up in awe.

The rancor stands at its full height and pounds its fists against its massive chest in challenge. 

Slania recognizes the creature by the scar on it’s nose. It’s the same rancor she tried to beckon before in the glen, but then she’d been ignored. It will kill the nightbrother, she realizes. And she is filled with an icy, calm purpose.

Slania moves forward, back straight, her hand out before her. She pulls her power around her like a cloak, draws it up and drags it forward. In the center of her eyes, a spark or electric green glows. The furious rancor stops, snorts--it notices her. It turns its small, black eyes on her, and stares at her as she strides forward, steps up onto a log, and places herself between the creature and the nightbrother. She feels no fear as she stares into its eyes, even as it leans down so close that her palm touches its nose. Its nostrils quiver as it sucks in a deep breath. Its breathing synchronizes with hers. The green glow in her eyes reflects in the creature's eyes...Then the rancor flinches back, blinking. It makes a low throaty burble of sound, coos and then turns away, its massive bulk slipping back between the vines and branches with only the softest hiss of plants bending and reeds whipping back into place.

Her arm slowly falls back down to her side. For a heartbeat, she stares at the space where the rancor once stood. Then slowly, regally, turns and looks down at the nightbrother. 

Without a word, she offers out her hand. He takes it, and she helps him to his feet.

  
  


* * *

  
  


They sit together, the nightsister and the nightbrother, atop the wall next to Slania’s guardpost: her with legs folded under her, him with his legs crossed loosely. They stare across the ravine at the nightbrother’s guardhouse, unspeaking, unmoving. A calm breeze whisks about them, ruffling garments and the nightsister’s blue hair. The little green wisp circles around them, and the nightbrother glances up warily, his gaze tracking it as it bobs around the pair of them.

The nightsister fidgets her hands, draws in a cautious breath. Carefully, she begins to sing under her breath. As her voice gains in strength, the brother glances over at her silently, his brows furrowed. She finishes the stanza alone and glances over at him. The frown on his face causes her to freeze. And then slowly, she frowns in turn. The pair of them stare at one another...then hesitantly, the nightbrother begins to sing as well, echoing back the words of the song. His voice rises, and she throws in her voice with his, singing as she would have done with her sister’s back in the village, one voice playing off the other and filling the silence of the borderland with song.


	2. The Sad Goodbye

The next morning, Slania rises at dawn after sleeping better than she has since first leaving the nightsister village. She strolls outside the guardhouse, standing beneath the hazy orange sky. The will-o-wisp darts out after her, sailing over her shoulder and whipping around in excited circles. She looks across at her nightbrother neighbor and the wind carries the sound of his voice to her. As he works, sharpening the edge of an obsidian throwing knife, he sings, and it’s the same song that they sang together the day before.

Slania bites back a smile and instead picks up her bow. With a spring in her step, she scampers down the ladder and into the rancor’s swamp.

Walking carefully, her bow at the ready, she sings softly under her breath. Then, just ahead, she notices an odd pair of lights flashing through the trees. It’s an artificial light, sharp and foreign: bright white. It’s a light that belongs on another world. She falls silent, and her expression hardens suspiciously. Crouching low, she slinks forward-- close enough to hear a low, pained groan...so low, in fact, that it is more feeling than sound. She brushes back the leaves and, kneeling down, peers out into the clearing, where the two spotlights harshly illuminate the swamp’s half-light.

A large, ugly space freighter has crushed most of the vegetation under it, and at the base of a lowered gangway, three rectangular durasteel cages sit. Off-worlders mill around in ugly, dull garments, laughing too loud. Blasters jangle from hips. The sister sees two rhodians, a twi’lek, a towering trandoshan with one eye, several humans...a least a dozen beings in total. And then she notices that one of the durasteel containers is  _ not empty.  _

“Get that one on board. Hurry up.”

“The tranqs worked like a charm! I never thought it would be so easy. We could catch us a whole circus of the ugly brutes.  _ Ha ha! _ ”

“The job manifest says three rancors and that’s it. Three. Let’s find the other two and get the kriff out of here.”

“What’re you scared of, boss? The rancor wasn't so tough.”

“It’s not the rancors we need to keep an eye out for. It’s the locals…””

The low groaning that shakes the ground is coming from the tranquilized rancor that lies face down in the furthest durasteel container, it’s bulk hardly contained by the rigid walls. 

Slania’s breath catches in her throat as she sees the old, twisted scar on the caged rancor’s nose. Her eyes go wide...and for a moment rage and disbelief are all she knows. Then she slips away, fast and silent.

Her sandaled feet fly silently over the damp soil. 

* * *

  
  


With his horned head bowed, the nightbrother finishes honing the edge of the blade and stands, testing the balance in his grip. The knife whirls toward its mark with satisfying ease, embedding into the lintel above the guardhouse door. As he pulls the blade neatly from the timber, a whisper of sound behind him causes him to pivot--immediately in guard.

The nightsister stands just out of reach, half out of breath, and fiercely intent.

“Come with me,” she says, her voice surprisingly even despite her race from the swamp.

He follows without a word.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The pair of them crouch, sister and brother, side by side amongst the curling undergrowth. Slania stares fixedly ahead, her expression set in a rigid mask of suppressed pain. Her mouth is a hard downturned line, her black eyes large and menacing, yet gleaming as if filled with unshed tears. The nightbrother stares expressionlessly at the cages and creatures.

“Who are they?” he asks at last.

“Off-worlders. Thieves,” Slania says fiercely.

“You want to kill them?” He looks at her, and she meets his gaze.

_ “Yes.” _

He nods: acknowledgement, agreement, approval all in one.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The Dathomiri darkness covers the off-wordler’s camp. A few electro-lamps burn, and there is muffled laughter from the poachers as they converse over drinks and a game of sabaac. Their voices punctuate what should be a quiet night, their noise an offense to the order of the swampland, and those piercing white electro-lamps buzz loudly as they fight back the dark.

“Only two more to go, Boss.”

“It’s like the  _ kriffing _ monsters are staying away on purpose. We should have gotten them all by now. Every day we stay--”

“Come on! It’s only been two days. No one even knows we’re out here!”

A twig cracks somewhere in the trees. The pale purple twi’lek--the Boss--flinches toward the sound. The one-eyed Trandoshan laughs.

“You’re hoppin’ at every little sound!”

“ _ Awww, _ I didn't know boss was scared of the dark.”

“Shut it, all of you.”

“Poor Boss-- _ OW _ !” The blue Rodian rubs the side of his head, where a small dark bruise is beginning to form. The stone his _ boss _ lobbed at him bounces off his boot and rolls into the dark. Everyone thinks it’s great amusement...save for those that watch the scene from behind a frame of tangled thorny branches. A large human man with a broken nose tosses his cards into the pile and stands, making toward the bushes.

“Folding already?” Jeers all around.

“Nature calls my friends,” the human calls back over his shoulder, already unfastening his belt. “If I don’t return, tell Marrz I never liked his borsch.”

“Tell me yourself, you womp-rat.”

The man steps backward into the dark, arms raised in a playful shrug, and is devoured by the darkness.

And only a moment later:  _ “Ggghhhhkkk!” _ . A choked off cry.

“Rasper, you moon-jockey! You keep joking around and I’ll feed you to the rancors. Rasper-!”

Above, the branches shake but there is no wind tonight, and the hissing they hear is not from the branches whipping together in a gale, but the malevolent whispering of barely audible voices. The electro-lamps flicker.

“What is that?”

The poachers cast about frantically, up down, left right. They can’t see anything, but the sound comes from all around. They see shadows darting between the trees, human-shaped but just-barely.

“Who are they?”

“They’re all around us!”

_ “We’re surrounded!” _

Two points of light appear in the darkness into which Rasper vanished: two points of light that look like... _ eyes! _

“Shoot it!  _ Shoot it! _ ” screams the Boss, drawing his blaster. 

Bright red bolts streak the air as they unleash a terrified volly into the trees. A shadow roars out of the darkness, a fanged streak of shadow and horns. A blade arcs down and one of the Rodian poachers screams as his blaster-arm hops away from his body, an arc of dark blue blood spraying through the air. The poachers scramble, trying to get out of the way but the horned _ thing _ is there among them, slashing with that blade. 

They break formation and run back toward the ship, every man for himself. A weequay fires wildly into the branches above, his mouth open in a silent scream. Something grey as new ashes drops from overhead lands on his shoulders, and fires a searing streak of bright pink light into the top of his head. No one sees him fall. No one sees the woman still perched on his shoulders as he hits the ground. They are all scrambling, dropping their blasters in their haste.

Another human is dragged back into the bushes by his ankles, arms up to fend off the lance that pierces him through the throat.

A rumble of thunder echoes overhead and unexpectedly, it begins to rain.

“Boss! Boss! This way!” The Trandoshan yells, waving him forward waith a clawed hand. His dark form is barely visible behind the sheets of water pouring from between the branches above. The purple twi’lek races toward him, trusting the Trandoshan’s superior night vision, while the screams of his dying men fade behind them. They slosh through the grey until the rectangular edges of the rancor cages materialize out of the gloom.

“The cages, Boss. We’re almost there.”

“Keep going-” The twi’lek snarls, but then he notices a shape, narrow and humanoid, materializing before the containers. 

It’s a pale, humanoid figure clad in crimson rags.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Freeze or I’ll light up your spine!” the twi’lek cries.

Slania pivots carefully and looks at the off-worlder, willing her arms to lay calm at her sides.

“It’s one of them!” the purple twi’lek shouts back over his shoulder, his voice rising to a fearful pitch.

“One of  _ who _ , Boss?”

“Don’t move, not even a step!”

Slania stares at them both, these two loathsome evil interlopers, with frigid purpose. She understands their words. They speak Basic, a language she learned beside her own as a youngling, but that is not why she remains still. She draws upon her power, the power she called upon to shake the branches and fill the forest with visions of an army of nightsisters, when it was only they two- the brother and the sister alone against them. 

Now she calls upon her power with grim purpose. It’s similar to the first time she tried to summon the rancor, but while the rancor was too regal and proud to bend to such a summoning, the twi’lek man does. She pushes at him with her eyes, and he trembles, his face contorting in terror. He turns, wild eyed, and looks at his one-eyed Trandoshan companion as if he has never seen him before. His mouth opens in a soundless scream. 

He lifts his blaster.

“Boss, what are you doing?” the Trandoshan roars. “Ysenn, don’t shoot! It’s me!”

The twi’lek opens fire. The Trandoshan leaps out of the way, sliding across the mud as he avoids bolt after blaster bolt, leaving them to sizzle in the wet soil at his heels.

Then Slania turns, her adversaries too busy battling one another to stop her, and walks toward the caged rancor.

Old Split-nose breathes in belabored gusts, slow and heavy. She approaches the container, hands hovering over the security panel as she deciphers the Basic written on the keys. She presses two buttons and the automatic door rolls upward, like a rug being whipped up off a dirty floor. The rancor groggily opens one black eye, black like Slania’s own, and gives a pathetic groan.

“Get up,” she whispers, taking a step toward the creature. “Rise! You  _ must _ !” She implores.

Reaching out, both with her fingertips and her power, Slania lays her palm against the rancor’s scarred nose. 

The creature gives a sharp snort, its breath streaming on the air. She lumbers upward, blinking her small black eyes with fierce clarity. Slania slips around the edge of the container, allowing rancor to stomp past her. She watches, a true, unrestrained smile curving her lips, as Split-nose vanishes into the haze of rain. 

She does not watch alone, though. The Nightbrother is there, and the pair of them look at one another, sharing in that fragile moment of unrestrained pride and joy between them. 

She lets him see her smile.

The bolt comes out of nowhere. 

Slania barely has time to dodge but it misses her and instead strikes the security panel. Bright white sparks burst outward in a geyser of light. The Nightbrother hurls his lance into the shape of the lead poacher. The purple twi’lek falls back, the blaster flying from his hand, to lie still in the mud. 

Above Slania’s head, the metal door screeches and slams back downward on its track, plunging toward her. 

A blur of orange-ochre and horns, and Slania is shoved clear of the door. She’s sent tumbling and skidding across the mud as the door slams down behind her. She rolls onto one knee, flicking her wet hair out of her face and turns back to see….

_ The nightbrother pinned by the massive metal door against the ground. _ One hand, stretched out across the wet soil, flexes weakly. 

Slania scrambles forward, grabbing at his hand. 

“ _ Brother _ ,” she whispers fiercely. 

His fingers curl hard around hers, squeezing so that his nails dig into her skin.

Then all at once, his grip goes slack.

“Brother?” she calls after him, but she knows there will be no answer. His body is still. 

_ Silent _ , save for the patter of rain.  _ Silent _ , she clasps the lifeless hand in both of her own and rests her forehead against the metal door. There is a leather cuff on his wrist, and she studies it for a long time. Black strips of leather braided through crimson suede. Copper beads and tiny red crystals. A small Dathomiri inscription rings the wrist, in shining paint.

His name.

She does not weep though the feeling is in her, hard beneath her ribs like a fist.

The little wisp appears out of the dark, inquisitively circling her. Tentative.

She pulls the leather cuff from the nightbrother’s wrist. Rising to her feet, she fastens it around her own. Straight-backed, head held up, she returns to the night.

Out in the dark, the rancor’s mourn for her. Their low calls resonate like muffled sobs.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Slania walks from that night into the sun-streaked day-light of the swamp, pillars of light illuminating her proud form. She carries a nightbrother lance in her hand, and her energy-bow on her back. The little green will-o-the-wisp whirls around her head, a head crowned with a headdress that mimics the sharp horns of her fallen brother. And around her, in the trees, walking with her, move the massive forms of a family of rancors. 

**Author's Note:**

> Traversing nonbinary themes through the lens of a society that seems very hung up on gender dichotomy.


End file.
